December 25 – 30, 2022
When E and I got engaged before COVID-19, we had agreed to have our honeymoon in New Zealand. E is a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, so New Zealand had been on his list for some time. As for me, when I make friends from all over the world, their home country gets added to my list of places to visit. New Zealand is one of those places, since I have a good friend in South Korea from New Zealand. Also, as someone who loves traveling and the outdoors, not just any trip would be good enough for my honeymoon. It would have to be momentous. Therefore, New Zealand became the destination of our honeymoon. However, all the chaos of COVID-19 threw that hope out the window. After we finally had our wedding party, we re-discussed our honeymoon and considered other places like South Africa (high on my list because of a childhood friend) and Peru. As New Zealand slowly re-opened to tourism, we agreed that we were willing to spend a bit more money for a New Zealand then what we originally planned because when would we ever have this chance again. Despite all the chaos of the last three years, we managed to plan our honeymoon to New Zealand and the trip was as momentous as we had hoped!
Our trip consisted of 20 days total, but we lost 2 days due to traveling from the US to New Zealand. 18 days was just enough (barely) to see a bit of both the North Island and South Island. We had quite a few miles saved up with United, but we still had to purchase additional miles in order to buy two round trip tickets to New Zealand on United and Air Canada. We primarily stayed at AirBnBs (with a few hotels) and rented a car for our journeys outside of Auckland. As expected, the flights were long. Surprisingly, however, we were not jet-lagged. Even though we lost a day due to time difference, in a way it felt like we lost no time because we left late at night and arrived in the morning, following a natural process of sleep.
I couldn’t emphasize this even more, but New Zealand is a gorgeous country with a lot of variety and diversity. Oddly enough, different parts of New Zealand, especially on the North Island, reminded me of many other places I visited around the world. The streets of Auckland reminded me of so many different cities across the world including Seoul, Geneva, Hawaii, and Boston. The suburban areas of Auckland reminded me of the suburban areas of France. The wide open spaces of Rotorua and even on the South Island with their tall colonnade trees reminded my of the Tuscan countryside in Italy. As expected, different parts of the South Island (not as much as I thought would though) reminded me of Iceland. Most surprising, however, all the small gold mining towns dotting the Coromandel Peninsula reminded me of the small mountain mining towns of Colorado! I think the fact that New Zealand brought out so much of my past experiences to my mind adds to the uniqueness of the country – a country that has a little bit of everything.
North Island: Auckland and Waiheke
Auckland
As I said, we arrived mid-day to Auckland. We had some time to kill prior to checking in to our AirBnB, so we grabbed some food and took it easy. Our AirBnB was in the heart of downtown and stone’s throw away from the Sky Tower. Once we dropped off our luggage and rested a bit, we began to explore the city. I planned for two and a half days to visit Auckland. In reality, we could have seen just as much in a day and a half. Auckland actually was quite difficult to get around, since we had to solely rely on buses and walking. The metro train system had been closed for the holidays. Still we managed to see quite a bit in those two and a half days. On our first evening, we walked from our AirBnB room to the Ferry Building and along Viaduct Harbour to Wynward Quarter. We looped our way back through Victoria Park to the Sky Tower and ended up back at our room to rest a bit more before dinner.
The first full day took us outskirts of downtown Auckland to see other major sites. After breakfast, we made our way to Albert Park and then on to Auckland Domain. Generally, I am not one to visit museums, especially museums with ‘War’ in their title, but E wanted to visit the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Here, we saw traditional Maori structures and artifacts, Polynesian history, natural history of New Zealand, and a WWII exhibit. The WWII exhibit was particularly interesting since my grandfather fought in WWII on the Pacific front. Overall, this museum, with its diverse types of exhibits, was quite impressive. I brought the history and culture of New Zealand and Polynesia alive. After our museum visit, we were ready for some food. We took a bus to Ponsonby to try out the various restaurants. Generally, Ponsonby is one of the nightlife streets, but even at lunchtime it was quite fun. Still, E wanted to visit at night sometime, specifically to checkout this restaurant, Lucky 8, to the point where we returned to Ponsonby at night on two separate occasions just to eat at Lucky 8. Our final activity of the day was a trip up Sky Tower to see the view of the full city.
On our second day, we journeyed even farther outside of downtown Auckland to Mount Eden and One Tree Hill. Mount Eden, a dormant volcano, has the highest peak in Auckland, providing a beautiful view of the Auckland skyline. Similarly, One Tree Hill, is also a volcanic peak. One Tree Hill, no longer has a tree at the top of the hill–the non-native tree had been removed and replaced with an obelisk monument as a memorial to the Maori. Both of these trips took a lot of energy out of our day, so we returned to our room before freshening up for a fancy course meal dinner at The Grove.
Waiheke
To end our time in Auckland, we took a day trip to Waiheke Island! A short ferry ride outside of Auckland, here we enjoyed our time with a small hike along the coast, followed by a quick dip in the chilly bay waters at Onetangi Beach, and ending with a wine tasting at Obisdian Wines vineyard nearby. We brought back home some of Obsidian Wine’s wonderful wines!
Coromandel and Rotorua
Coromandel Peninsula
We rented a car from Ezi Rentals for the next portion of our trip. This would be the very first time E would drive on the left side of the room. Once before, I had driven on the left side of the road in Australia. But I barely count it. It was late at night. Where I made a turn and ended up on the right side of the road. Then my friend and her husband slightly panicked. Luckily, there were no cars ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyways, if you have never driven on the left side of the road before, I would definitely not recommend driving to Coromandel Peninsula along the western coast of the peninsula. Growing up in Colorado, I am quite used to curvy roads with steep inclines. However, even I got nervous on occasion as E veered towards the left and the cliffside into the waters. Two things I learned about driving on the left side as a right side driver: the driver tends to lean towards the left and should correct oneself and hug the center line; and the turning signal and windshield wipers are switched. Every time we would want to signal, we would turn on our wipers. Over time, however, E’s comfortability in left side driving grew to where it took him some time to adjust to right-side driving when we returned home.
Our first stop along the Coromandel Peninsula road trip was at Coromandel Town. We didn’t stay long here, just long enough to go to the restroom and pick up some groceries. This town in particular reminded me a lot of a Colorado mountain town. Although the bay was not too far away, I could not view the waterfront from the town. Instead, the town was nestled open land and surrounded by hills and small mountains. Coromandel town also has a gold mining history, adding to the parallels between Coromandel and the Rockies. After Coromandel town, we decided to cut inwards on the peninsula and skip neighboring towns along our route to our AirBnB in Hikuai. We planned to return to a few of those key tourist spots later in our stay.
We returned back to Tairua and visited Mount Paku in the afternoon. There, we did the short hike up the mountain to see the views of the surrounding coastlines and towns. Tairua was much more quiet than we expected, especially on New Years Eve. Since it was a holiday, most of the shops and restaurants closed early and so we had a large chunk of time to wait before NYE fireworks began. When it was late enough, we went to Pauanui, on the other side of the estuary, to watch NYE fireworks and be among the first to greet the new year!
Day Two in Coromandel took us to all the key tourist spots. I particularly liked Karangahake Gorge, probably because once again, this area reminded me of Colorado, specifically the areas around Glenwood Springs. Karangahake Gorge has some short and sweet hikes that any skill level can do. We spent maybe an hour and half walking along the Karangahake Gorge Historic Walkway and into an extended railway tunnel.
After Karangahake, we drove all the way back up to Hahei so that we could hike to Cathedral Cove at low tide. Hahei actually is quite a cute beach town. We were there on the later side so the town and beach wasn’t overly crowded. Even still, E did not want to swim because the water was too cold, and he is the beach person between the two of us. The walk/hike to Cathedral Cove took longer than expected. Probably because I was tired and hungry at that point and probably because we walked along the road rather than the beach hiking trail. Well, we made it to Cathedral Cove a little before low tide and so we enjoyed the breathtaking views!
The last item on our list for the day was Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach must be visited at low tide so that the hot water is accessible to beach goers. The owner of our AirBnB let us borrow a shovel to dig our hole. However, being newbies to the area, we chose a non-hot spot to dig. Eventually, we joined a large group of people who had found a hot spot. And that hot spot could be scalding hot at times. To solve this, we would push cold water and hot water around to get the perfect temperature. After an hour or so, E and I were ready to head back to town and get some dinner before going back to our AirBnB.
Rotorua and Nearby Areas
Up next was one of my favorites locations – Rotorua and the surrounding areas! A must-do activity was visit Hobbiton in Matamata since E is a Lord of the Rings fan. Like all must-do activities, I intended to book the tickets early. Even though Hobbiton had a large number of tickets available during the summer, all direct tickets were all booked up when I was ready to buy in October. As an alternative, I found a tour bus for a decent price leaving from Tauranga, which was on our route. The only downside to going through a tour bus rather than direct is that we lost a significant amount of time and had more driving time than we would have liked. However, it is better that we are able to go than not. E loved Hobbiton and I had fun–I am not as big of a fan, but I like pretty landscapes, and Hobbiton is pretty :). As we were walking around with our tour, E lit up and he even took more photos of Hobbiton than I did, which is saying something for sure. Even if you are not a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, I would recommend Hobbiton to anyone that enjoyed the movies.
Unfortunately, we were not able to spend much time in Tauranga since Hobbiton took up most of the day. So we hit the road and made our way to Rotorua. We spent the evening relaxing in our AirBnB. E bought some wonderful (and inexpensive) lamb at the grocery store and we ate a delicious dinner outside, even though we could smell the sulfuric hot spring water everywhere.
The plan for day Two in Rotorua included driving out to see the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, return to Rotorua to visit Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Park, and end the day at Polynesian Spa hot springs. However, the day did not go exactly according to plan. We first went to Waitomo Glowworm Caves and loved the visit. Due to environmental protections over the glowworms, we could not take any pictures (and rightly so). Even if we could, the photos would be too dark to fully capture the beauty of the glowworms against the black cave walls. Our next location Wai-o-Tapu, we had to remove from the day. I purchased the tickets in advance; however I did not realize that Wai-o-Tapu was closed on Tuesdays, and it was a Tuesday. Even if they were open, I am not sure if we would have made it before their closing hours. Instead, we drove to the Blue and Green Lakes Lookout near Rotorua and also walked around Lake Rotorua and the lands around Rotorua Museum. After eating dinner, we watched the sunset soaking in the hot springs of Polynesian Spa right on the edge of Lake Rotorua. One activity that I wish I knew about before planning and I would do if I ever go back would be to go ZORBing–basically rolling down a hill in a giant hamster ball. My coworker told me about it, shortly before we left to New Zealand and it looks like lots of fun.
Well, the hot spring ended our time on the North Island! Check out my next post for our activities on the South Island!
Until next time,
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